Sakleshpur - a paradise to pedal

I always wished to pedal in the most scenic and greenery terrain, and one of the places was Sakleshpur. Cool breeze, slight drizzle and gigantic mountains around which motivates.

Sakleshpur, planned on 24th June, the accommodation, bicycle transport were all taken care by home stay called Off-road with collaboration with ICycle.

I under estimated the trip by distance without the type of terrain. It was nice event organised, pedalling a distance nearly 100km in that terrain is a challenge.

coming to the details - we started come where near chanaraypatna, where our cycles were transported. Before reaching the starting point we had some nice breakfast on the way. Before starting get ourselves geared up....

A team 

fixing our gears, I mean cycles

We started with full energy and enthu. It was a highway, and started to cruise, enjoying the nice breeze and the weather was cool.

The route which we took is C. Patna ➡ Holenarsipura ➡ Arakalgod ➡ Mallipatna ➡ Kodlipet ➡ Magilu ➡ Nidigere ➡ Echalapura ➡ OffrOad.

Arakalgod is the place where we had the most waited lunch. It was just amazing after having straight head headwind which was so strong even in downhill pedalling was necessary.

A well deserved lunch after battling with headwind to move on

Finally the resting place

Weekend rides - an endless combination

Often people find it difficult to get on the saddle for weekend rides. But our group is different, we start conversation starting every Monday planning where to ride this coming weekend.

Some weeks we ran out of routes, then the wandering natural instinct get awakened. We call those rides as exploring rides.

By the way, there are different rides which we do in weekends, endurance ride, sprint ride, exploring ride, off roading and including few chatty rides.

Endurance rides will be serious riding following rhythm, composed cadence, even pedalling as spending minimal energy is the key to cover large distances.

Sprint ride is like riding with entire strength and breath left to conquer the segments. We are not bothered about distance, speed, cadence, we are more bothered about record beating.

Exploring ride is just getting lost in country side roads, exploring new tracks, new crazy elevations, off road possibility, tarmac roads.

Chatty rides are just casual rides, where we discuss about various things which bothers us, may be in office, career, cycling and what not.

And we did something called as Tour De Temples riding to identified famous temples and covered all of them in a day.

Here are some of the pics of our group and rides.

Cycling - A never ending hobby

I never thought would go this far in cycling. Here are the timelines that has passed in my cycling journey.

From no where, all of a sudden I wished I should have a bike and do cycling. Bought Rocker 5.0 from Decathlon.

It was a nice bike, still the geometry is not great for long rides. Rode for almost a year and sold it. The whole period it was just a office commute and come couple of long rides.

Here are some of the memory of my first bike after my teen

Has been for a couple of long rides on Rockrider 5.0 as well

Second comes my Rockrider 340, which I bought just a day before going to Big Banyan Ride. Here are some of the pics when I was riding Rockrider 340

Some of the random rides which includes Big Banyan Tree, Nelamangala etc.

Rode around 700 kilometres on this bike. Its really a good bike. Never let me down. But I bought this without much doing some research. After routinely started cycling, riding 800kms in 5 months, which I think its a good start, felt I need much more capable bike than this.

Finally decided to go with Scott Aspect 750, wanted badly this colour combination. So had to go for a year old model.  My friends greatly helped me in choosing the right bike for my budget. 

My data says, after buying this bike, have started loving cycling even more. Have rode 800+ kms in just 1.5 months. Bought this bike just 2 weeks back. Already it has accompanied for 250+ kms.

Really enjoying cycling.. 

Into the wild for 3 days - BRT, KGudi, Bandipur, Kabini, Dammankatte

Backpack with all the equipments, charged batteries and cellphones, spare memory cards and a few clothes, ready for a vacation to the wild.

6th September 2015

Started at 4.00 AM from Sunday i.e, 6th September towards Mysore. Took Kanakapura road suspecting traffic in Mysore Road.

We drove at a very moderate speed enjoying the nature around. The morning dawn was soothing and adding more cool with the background melodious song playing. 

We stopped to have the breakfast in Kollegala in a small canteen, and a tea from a nearby bakery and started off heading towards KGudi.

Here are some of the pics.

Break

Green fields

Entering BRT

Took off to the road, very silent and slow, so that we could spot some wildlife. Started heading towards KGudi, half way we took a turn to visit Bili Giri Ranganath Swamy Temple, as we had come so far, thought of visiting. 

After having the darshan in BRT, it was around 11.30 AM. So headed towards Bandipur via KGudi, which as well is a reserved forest. So, we are alert and trying our luck to find some wild animals.

Here are some of the pics we found on the go.

Finally, we reached Gundulpet at around 2 PM, as told earlier, we were very slow. In Shabari Udupi restaurant, sumptuous meal gobbling soon as we would miss first safari in Bandipur at 3PM otherwise.

Reached Bandipur before 3 PM, checked in the rooms there, took the tickets. What a relief ! 

We often do this, we go to back to back safari, went two safari's the very first day in twilight.

Safari is entirely based on luck, and I wish to tell we are the lucky guys. So was expecting some rare carnivorous animals to sight. Lets see...

Here are some of the pics

After the safari, knowing that the vehicle which left after had sighted the tiger. Before leaving, our driver had different plans, suspecting that the tiger would appear from the other way so we took that route. But Couldn't find much. :( 

Ok, time to tickle our taste buds, huh :P

Drove in the evening after safari to relish the street food at Gundulpet. Would recommend anyone.. Wow, so YUMMY.... Don't indulge in simply eating those tasty foodie, need to come back before 9PM before Bandipur Gate is sealed.

We came back by 8.45 PM, discussing about what happened to our lucks, we couldn't sight any such interesting animals. :(

No dejection, there always next time, so consoling ourselves on this went to bed so that we can grab the tickets for next day safari at 6 AM.

7th September 2015

Lot of enthusiasm, strong desire to sight the tiger, we got into the safari. We have good rapport with the staff, so they took us where there is a possibility of sighting a tiger. But these areas fall in the actual buffer zone not in the core forest regions.

Remember, my last blog where we had sighted the tiger, the same one has being followed now. So we took off, closely looking into the tiger. But we could only see the fresh pug marks.

But we saw some wild animals, here are some the pics

But we never left behind our desire, we caught the next safari. We started again looking closely, fortunately, there was the sighting of tiger to a bunch of guys of last safari. Our driver now knows the right location of the Tiger. By the time we go there was huge line already :) . There were around 3 buses, Safari Jeeps and a documentary gypsy, awaiting the tiger to appear from the bushes. We waited patiently for 5-10 minutes. Enough, we decided, will roam around and come back. After coming back the same scene, still people are waiting. So, we thought again we will be disappointed. Taking a last chance, our driver told, lets look at it one last time, we came this time, there were no buses, we didn't find. As we were about to take the turn, there was that majestic, king of jungle, sitting and relaxing. We took the turn, he started walking again into the bush. Our Driver drove the other side, and surprising it appeared from there. We are very busy in shooting from our DSLR, like firing rounds after rounds from a automatic gun. :)

It sat just some meters away, as if fed up and wanted to give us some shots. These are best shots I had ever got. People are surprised to hear we always sight tiger in Bandipur.

Also, there is an interesting story about how we found the tiger this time. Let me narrate you.

On the day we camped in Bandipur, the tiger which is named as Prince, was looking desperately for a a kill, and wandering tirelessly for that. The officials could easily spot the tiger as it would be looking for its prey instead of resting in camouflage.

Here are some of the best shots.

Later, we thought of visiting some other places as there would be no safari after 9.30 AM. Ok, Did I tell you that the safari timings is from 6 AM to 9 AM in the morning and 3 PM to 6 PM in the evening.

So, just to while time, we thought of visiting the Himavat Gopala Swamy Temple, which can translated as the Hima in kannada (meaning such as ice, dew, mist, snow) Gopalaswamy another name for Lord Krishna, so in total Lord Krishna on Snow. I am not exaggerating, If you visit this place, you could actually fell the clouds, the coolness would reach deep into the soul.

Here are some of the snaps

Again, we drove very slow enjoying the nature around, it was around 1.30 PM we realised we need to get the safari tickets for afternoon, again we drove to Gundulpet to the Udupi Restaurant to have our meal. We rushed back to Bandipur at 2.30 PM to get the tickets in first row.

Again, we had a sighting of Tiger Prince, it was looking to kill a Indian Gaur, it was separated from its herd, looked restless. We saw the tiger again in a close proximity out of the bush. But somehow the Indian Gaur survived this time. We could see the fear. There was a alert call from the animals around, deers, Indian gaurs were all alert and vigilant. We waited it to come back. But in vain we couldn't find out after it disappeared in the bushes after our safari vehicle approached.

Here are some of the pics.

That's how we spent the second half of the day. There is a saying "If the objective is achieved at the very young age you lose the reason for living". Similarly, we sighted the Tiger, the very second day, and were content.

Has delicious street food in Gundulpet and started discussing about the day's event.

That night, there popped up new desires, like how about sighting a Leopard, Black Panther or a Sloth Bear tomorrow. Finally, we got back our goal to continue the trip :)

8th September 2015

Got up early to get the tickets again, we went for two safari's back to back, we missed the leopard in few minutes where another vehicle has sighted it, but by the time we came there it wasn't there, same was the case with Sloth Bear.

Here are some snaps

We thought of going to Nagarhole through Sultan Bateri via Metikuppe. But we missed the road and took the other road through Dammankatte-HD Kote- Metikuppe-Moorkallu- Nagarhole. It was a round about, but it's fine we got to know that even Dammankatte has a Safari.

By the time we reached Nagarhole it was around 5 PM, we took a home stay near by. Fill some stomach filling and dozed off.

9th September 2015

We had heard, there is always very sighting happening in Metikuppe road. So, we tried our luck in the morning instead of depending on any Safari.

We found some elephants, Indian Gaur, Barking dear, Malabar Squirrel etc. But nothing great to excited.

Here are some of the pics of the morning drive.

At around 11AM we left the homestay to Dammankatte for the safari. Safari was to start at 4PM. We had high expectation in this safari because there was a black panther in this region.

We had some nice sighting here, but nothing great again. Here are some of the pics.

After all these, we thought whether to head to Kabini or back to Bangalore.  We decided to head towards Bangalore. Had delicious street food and chats in Mysore, reached Bangalore around 11 PM.